Page 14 of Unleashed

Walk away. Now.

I should leave. Pack my bag for Vancouver tomorrow. The team needed their captain focused on the road trip, not fixated on some producer with trouble written all over her.

Would she be on the plane?

The thought ambushed me, unwelcome but impossible to ignore. What Lily Sutton did wasn’t my damn business. But I couldn’t shake the image from the last flight—her shoulder brushing Silver’s while they shared her tablet screen, my quiet alternate captain making her laugh. The same guy who’d inherit my C next season. They’d fallen into an easy rhythm, heads bent close, trading comments like they’d known each other forever.

My fingers clenched around the bottle neck. The beer had gone warm. I shouldn’t care who she spent time with. Shouldn’t notice how natural they looked together, or how her smile lit up her whole face when Silver said something that made her laugh.

Years of maintaining control, and here I sat, letting myself get wound up over nothing. Over someone who wasn’t mine to worry about.

As if sensing my thoughts, she finally lifted her head. Those blue-green eyes caught mine, gleaming in the dim light. Without her usual red lipstick, her smile looked softer. More genuine. My stomach did a fucking somersault like I was some rookie with his first crush.

Damn it.

“Viggy,” she said, voice carrying easily across the empty tables between us. “Fancy meeting you here.”

I gripped the bottle harder, fighting every instinct screaming to close the distance between us. To trace my fingers along that soft-looking skin the string lights painted in gold shadows. “Just grabbing a beer, Sutton. What else would I be doing on a Sunday night?” I kept my voice flat. Emotionless. The same tone I used in post-game pressers when some damn reporter asked a stupid question. And downed another swallow of beer to stop myself from saying more.

“Right.” Her low murmur raised the hair on my neck. “Just a beer. On a Sunday night. Alone. In a dimly lit bar. Sounds like the setup for a thriller movie. Are you meeting your secret contact? Getting your next mission?”

The amusement in her voice, the underlying challenge inherent in her mere presence, fanned embers I couldn’t afford to feed. “You stalking me now? Don’t you have enough footage of me by now?” I scowled at my beer, grip white-knuckled around the bottle.

A laugh bubbled up from her—rich and real, nothing like the polished sound she used with her crew. “Hardly.” She tapped her stylus against the table. “My apartment’s just off Sixth, a couple blocks that way.” She gestured vaguely toward the street. “The diner I’ve been going to closed up. Being fumigated or something.” She widened her eyes dramatically. “A big, scary Health Department notice on the door. I asked Google for a replacement and...here I am.”

Her smile faded, a shadow flickering across her face. “I had no idea I’d run into you, Jack. Swear.”

My first name on her lips hit with the force of a body check—smooth and powerful and lighting up every nerve ending. Too intimate. Too real. Bad enough she’d crawled under my skin with her questions and that knowing look. Bad enough she made me want to spill secrets I’d never shared. But hearing my name in that soft voice of hers?

Fucking kryptonite.

And still I leaned closer, drawn in like a moth to the flame that would burn down every defense I’d built. Because that’s who Lily Sutton was—beautiful and lethal and everything I shouldn’t want. Everything I couldn’t stop wanting, no matter how many times I told myself to walk away.

A half-drunk glass of wine sat beside her laptop along with a glass of water and a blue plastic basket filled with pretzels. The bar didn’t offer much in the way of food. My mouth quirked up despite myself. “Hard at work with pretzels and wine?”

She motioned to her gear on the table with an exaggerated flourish. “Living the dream. What can I say? Some of us actually work for a living instead of just skating around looking pretty.”

That teasing lilt in her voice did dangerous things to my control. Maybe she hadn’t planned this. Maybe it was just bad luck. Life had a way of piling on the complications lately. Busted knee. Retirement breathing down my neck. And now this—running into Sutton in the one place I let my guard down. Seemed the hockey gods hadn’t finished testing me this season.

I shifted my focus to the cat poking his head up from the depths of his backpack. Safer territory. “Maybe you’re the one hiding out. Or plotting world domination with your feline overlord here?”

“Jokes?” Her laugh hit me right in the gut, warm and genuine. Something I hadn’t heard before; something I suddenly craved. “I don’t believe it,” she continued. “The mighty Jack Vignier, making jokes? What have you done with the stern captain?”

I looked away, her playful tone scraping against raw nerves. Once upon a time, even just last season, she’d have met a different man. I would still have hated the idea of her show, but everything else? The bum knee, the restlessness about what to do after hockey... that would have been different.

Her smile softened as she caught whatever darkness must have crossed my face. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop teasing. To be honest, I’m running on fumes, but I have to get these show notes to Malone or else.” She popped a pretzel in her mouth, crunching thoughtfully. “Though I suppose there are worse places to be working late.”

The casual intimacy of the moment carved straight to the bone. No cameras, no crew, just Lily being... Lily. The scent of her—citrus and something spicier—wrapped around my head like an intoxicating fog. The way she tucked one leg under herself, making those tiny shorts ride higher on smooth thighs. The gentle curve of her neck exposed by that mess of dark hair, begging for my mouth to trace the delicate line of muscle and tendon.

My dick throbbed, already hard from just watching her exist in my space. From imagining how that soft skin would feel under my calloused hands. How those full lips would part on a gasp if I gave in to the urge to taste her. To find out if the real thing matched the fantasy that had been torturing me for months.

My body moved before my brain caught up, taking seven strides to her table. The closer I got, the stronger that citrus-spice scent of hers wrapped around me. “You mind?” I pulled out one of her chairs, already knowing I’d regret the move tomorrow.

“You have to sit there quietly. I’m working.” But the way her dark brow arched, that little smirk playing at the corner of her mouth, sent heat straight through my blood.

“I thought you’d have the show notes for the next episode done already.” I forced a neutral tone, professional. “Don’t you have that shit finished up way ahead of time?”

“We have a vague outline, but it’s never set in stone. We never know what’s going to happen from week to week. For instance, the three-legged iguana showing up in Coach Mack’s office this morning?” She nodded toward her work. “But this is for a special episode. Malone is determined to fill the week you guys don’t have a game with something special.” Those sea-glass eyes fixed on me, sharp and assessing. “I was hoping it would be your episode, but we’re playing with the idea of doing a feature on the coach instead.”

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